A new instant 4X5 film that produces a superb negative, and a positive print too.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Industrial mass, and some trash

Over the last couple of days I have gone through piles of old microphone patents, broken musical instruments, magazines and a lot of other bits that were cluttering up "the back lab" and threw them out.

Doing so gives us about 6 X 10m of floor space which is already filling up with hotplates, scaffolding, the IR chamber, and several items needed to design and develop the semi-automated machine I have in mind for the center of this area.

This tool requires some electronic controls and feed motors, and a rotary cutting die. I'm going to try to save a lot of money by building some of it here.

The edge tape machine will bond the top and bottom sheets together, very precisely, very evenly, and cut each sleeve to length. The current design calls for a feed rate of 200-400 units per day over about 1 to 2 hours of run time, after setup.

We don't want to create an overcapacity. Just the right amount that we can make, and sell, if we have a steady flow of manufacturing, packaging and sales once we hit the steady state.

The object to my right is the trash container, and that's our old blue warehouse behind me.

10 comments:

sounds great and good luck. please check the longevity of the tape under refrigerator humidity conditions and over long periods as many of us photographers like to store our films in the fridge for long periods of times..

Bill - Yes you can, but you have to wait for me to have the time to come in and publish it.

On another point, we expect users to shoot, not hoard, New55 FILM. That is ESSENTIAL to the success of the project. The entire idea is to have a steady sales flow. If you have film from 1999, you ought to use it, quickly!

I think this makes sense. The market for this film will be relatively small, so gearing for a rate of production that keeps us all happy with film and maintains quality of product makes more sense than over-capitalizing for a high rate of sales that might not be sustainable.